June? July? 2024
Turnitin Originality
The Centre for Pedagogical Innovation is announcing changes to Turnitin service at Brock University. No action is required by instructors, staff, or students, and overall impact will be minimal.
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Originality Check does NOT have:
Peer-feedback (which PeerMark (a feedback tool that must operate outside of Brightspace and was never used in 2023-2024).
CPI has suggestions and guides on various options for facilitating peer-evaluation while making use of Brightspace and other educational technology tools.
QuickMarks (grades and comments within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
The Brightspace evaluation options for Assignments (as well as Quizzes and Discussions) are relatively easy-to-use and contain many options for instructors. These are explained in detail within our guide for Grading Assignment Submissions.
The existing annotation tool in the Brightspace Assignments provides for a streamlined grading process where graders can make notes, highlight, strikethrough, and comment all without having to download the submitted document. Further information and a preview is available in our article on Assignment Annotation Tools.
Rubrics and Grading Forms (also within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
The Brightspace Rubrics tool is feature-rich and provides a fulsome, structured mapping and grading experience for instructors and teaching assistants. More information can be found in our article on using the Rubrics tool to set standards and increase efficiency.
eRater Grammar (a built-in grammar check).
Two features that Brock was already not using:
Draft Coach (an MS Word integration to check originality and “coach” mistakesan AI coach).
Artificial Intelligence detection.*
*Brock elected to not engage with Turnitin’s AI tools for a variety of reasons, namely the inability to test and configure the tool in any way and concerns over its transparency and overall efficacy. Brock has also strengthened its stance on the usage of Generative AI detectors (in all forms) from “cautioning against” them to their use being “not institutionally condoned” (notes, dates?).
https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-detectors-biased-against-non-native-english-writers ?
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What is Turnitin?
As a reminder, this Turnitin is a similarity and phrase-matching tool that can be used to scan submitted assignments. It is a learning tool that plays a role in supporting academic integrity and preventing academic misconduct. The Similarity Check does not itself detect plagiarism and both its use and the reports it generates should be examined critically and with an open mind.
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